My friend David is planning on visiting Cornell next weekend. We both went to the same school freshman year but I transferred here as a sophomore. Still, we have kept very close and I have visited many times throughout the years. We are pretty knowledgeable about each other’s lives and I know a lot of his friends because we were in the same social circles when I left.
David: So I think im going to come up on Saturday
Steve: Nice, you should im pretty sure my house is having a mixer so it should be good times
David: Awesome, Busha says he wants to join so we may both be heading up
Steve: Sounds good, its going to be a good weekend.
In this part of the conversation we are both relying on existing common ground. I knew he was thinking about coming up and we both know about our social lives and what mixers/greek life involves. Busha is also one of our mutual friends from freshman year. We could use existing knowledge in this piece because it was relevant to our conversation and it was obviously knowledge that could be relevantly used and understood by both of us. In a later portion common ground did not exist.
David: I hope there are cute girls up there, but im kinda seeing Kaitlin now
Steve: Kaitlin?
David: Yeah from freshman year. Oh wait idk if you ever got to meet her. Ill show you her on fb when I get up there.
Steve: Alright
He at first thinks I know “Kaitlin” but from my embedded contribution “Kaitlin?” response he realizes that I don’t share his common ground and he must explain who she is at a later point. We could not use existing knowledge here because it was not mutually understood. We knew this by my questioning of his statement. Therefore there is much common ground to be established when he visits on this topic.
This is much like the “Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition “ example. David begins with his presentation phrase. I hear it and register it but the "Kaitlin?" Shows I don’t understand it. The acceptance phrase is not completed until he repairs his statement and I say alright. There are also formulation costs here because this was over text. He did not want to take the time to explain who she was and establish that common ground as it could take a lot longer than in person.
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Common ground definitely seems to be a major component of all communication. If no one knew anything about what was going on in eachothers lifes it would be a pretty boring conversation full of poking and prodding. I guess it would be interesting as you would be learning an awful lot about everyone you talked too.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a good post. It shows that you and David have some common ground from going to the same school freshman year. Then, after you transferred to Cornell your lives were a bit more separate, so you no longer shared as much common ground. Perhaps David was not accustomed to needing grounding in conversations with you, so he forgot that you didn't know Kaitlin. Nice analysis of the conversation.
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